Twitching Madness

Perth, Western Australia

Back in September 2015, I naively wrote in another trip report "Murphy's Law states that a truly big and notable dip is coming up soon - so stay tuned!" Never did I write a truer sentence and today I found out just how much a serious dip can hurt. What is dipping? Well, all twitchers inevitably have to experience at one time or another. It is the result when a chase for a specific targeted bird goes wrong - basically to go out searching for a bird and completely missing it. It is the poorest of feelings and often very disheartening. Like all birders, I have missed certain species when out in the field like Rose-crowned Fruit Dove, Pale-vented Bush Hen and my current bogey-bird Crimson Chat. But nothing seems to hurt more than when you make that extra effort, justify that extra cost and organise that specific trip for a single vagrant that all simply ends up going down the toilet.

Until this fateful day in mid-March 2016, I had a reasonably consistent twitching record with some recent highlights including American Golden Plover, Yellow Bittern, Grey-headed Lapwing, Long-billed Dowitcher and Paradise Shelduck. My most recent twitching endeavour had scored me a hat-trick of megas when I had flown over to Perth in Western Australia to twitch the Eurasian Hobby, Eurasian Curlew and Crested Honey-buzzard. Western Australia was having an unprecedented seasons for rarities with the aforementioned trio alongside a Little Stint in Denmark, a Kamchatka Leaf Warbler in Broome and a commendable swagger of Asian species on Cocos and Christmas Island.

Within a few days after returning to Melbourne, I was greeted with some pretty disappointing news. An unidentified juvenile imperial pigeon had just been located outside a local primary school in Thornlie, Perth. And though a consensus could not be agreed on for its exact species, no matter what it turned out to be, if accepted by BARC this bird would be a first for Australia. I spent the next few days tossing and turning whether or not to fly right on back to Perth for this single bird (all this for a damn pigeon?). The decision was eventually made for me when a House Crow was discovered at a boat shed in Fremantle. Those in the know would be aware of my past failures with this species, so I had a particular incentive to tick off and put it away in the past.

I was on a very tight schedule but decided to squeeze in a round day trip on the coming Friday. I was feeling reasonably confident that both birds would be reasonably straight forward. The imperial pigeon had been displaying daily and was proving to be a reliable twitch. The House Crow is normally a very high priority for the environment department to "take out" due to its highly invasive nature, however in this case, they had been aware of the bird for 3 weeks and still not acted so I thought my chances were still pretty safe. Either way I decided it would be best to chase the crow immediately after landing and tackle the pigeon later in the day.

Photo by Stephen Reynolds

Photo by R. Bruce Richardson

Photo by Stephen Reynolds

Photo by Nathan Piesse

Photo by Damien Cancilla

Photo by R. Bruce Richardson

Thursday came and both species were observed alive and well throughout the morning. So I logged onto Webjet.com and booked my flights to and from Perth for the following day. Total came to $595.90 - a big price to pay for two presumably ship-assisted vagrant birds from Asia. But if you ask any hardcore twitcher, it's always worth it if you get the satisfaction off marking of that little box on your checklist. Then the bad news came - the department of Agriculture had just arrived on site ready to kill the bird. Within an hour the bird disappeared never to be reported again - presumably hit by the agriculture people.

One down - my main target was kaput. I tried to tell myself it didn't matter but it still hurt pretty bad. Never mind, I still have the imperial pigeon I'd at least get some later ticking insurance. Wrong again! Shortly after the House Crow disappeared I received a message from one of the local birding experts from Perth. It was not good news and in essence summarised that the Western Australian Museum has records of an aviculturist in the area that use to own a handful of birds (including imperial pigeons) and that this bird was likely to be one of these birds. This is the result that makes the most sense, though still disappointing. It was pretty hard to believe that a creature that is normally found in Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia made its way 2,500km into suburban Perth. Its behaviour had been a pretty good indicator also with it feeding on bread crumbs on the ground and showing other signs of abnormal 'wild' bird behaviour.

​So I made the call and decided to stay in Melbourne. Thankfully I could move my flights and still use the credit points to book my trip to Perth later in the year when I was on my way to Cocos and Christmas Island - so no real loss there. Despite not actually leaving home to chase a bird, I still see this as my biggest dip. I had planned the trip, spent the money and moved around all my work, meetings and gigs for Friday. Come Friday night and twitching opportunity long past I log on to see a statement from the Agriculture department basically highlighting the fact that they had in fact missed the House Crow and will not resume their search to Monday morning. Bollocks, the icing on the cake...